2023-07-16 13:00:00
When the German poet Johann Christian Günther, not even thirty years old, was killed by tuberculosis in Jena exactly 300 years ago, a poet between the baroque and modern times, who was considered by his contemporaries and posterity to be a great talent, died. Not only did he know all the tricks of the ancients and mastered all forms of form-conscious baroque, but, fueled by a special sensuality and imagination, as Goethe attested to him in Poetry and Truth, he was also an innovator who expanded the limits of what could be said.” One writes according to models and rules; but the spirit of the poetry takes possession of a few poets in order to leave the mere artistic understanding far behind and to achieve unimagined perfection,” writes Edgar Hederer in his anthology of baroque poetry. Günther is the first great poet of a new age.” The old form that wants distance from one’s own experience is still powerful. …Challenging the world and destiny with unprecedented frankness, he wants to break away from the old world like tearing a bandage off a wound. … A curse is upon his life. Perhaps it took such misfortune to awaken such greatness. He’s someone who always paid cash.”
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